Compelling reasons for IDEA
Although I am an avid fan of IDEA, I am truly struggling to explain why someone should prefer to use IDEA over a free competitor, such as Eclipse. Of course, I can see the justification for myself, but my explanation so far is not much more than "because it's just better".
Of course I could rant about the same things that many rant about on blogs, etc., but this all seems to be subjective material - far from compelling.
Can anyone provide some substantial arguments that would appear compelling to an observer who is not swayed either way?
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Since when is buying just what you need stupid?
It's not (although I would bet you do it a lot less than you think). Trying to sell someone just what they need turns out to be extremely stupid.
Hershey is in the process of selling all of it's non-candy food divisions. It's not that they are losing money selling other stuff. It's just that while people need food, they want candy, so Hershey can make much higher margins.
JetBrains has never been in the business of selling programmers what they need, and if they are smart they never will be. JetBrains has been in the business of making programmers feel like fuel-injected superheroes. "Develop with pleasure", and they mean it.
+Tell me what is stupid:
- pay 500$ for IDEA, just to have an XML smart-editor that can refactor
and analyze XML, version and display diffs
- pay 50$ for IDEA-XML, just to have an XML smart-editor that can
refactor and analyze XML, version and display diffs+
Presumably in that case, you pay $180 for oXygen, because it's better suited to your XML needs, will grow with you, and will certainly be better supported. Or you pay $0 for a pirated copy of IDEA. Or you pay $500 for a full version of IDEA, because it's actually your boss paying for it, and you can convince him that chances that you won't have to do any Java in the next year are rather small.
If functionality were all that mattered in software marketing, the arguments for limited-functionality subproducts would make sense. It's not, never will be, and really shouldn't be.
--Dave Griffith
Dave,
> > pay 50$ for IDEA-XML, just to have an XML smart-editor that can
> > refactor and analyze XML, version and display diffs+
> Presumably in that case, you pay $180 for oXygen, because it's
better suited to your XML needs, will grow with you, and will
I limited my example to XML because each time I would write "everything
but Java", you would treat it like a cheap IDEA version that would
poorly serve java developers.
Forget Java and java developers. Look at HtmlCssJavascript, the
trinity of web sites and applications. Many web developers I know use a
plain text editor to create entire web sites. They would benefit from a
smart editor, that can highlight syntax errors, navigate, rename,
refactor, version, compare, etc... those 3 types of files.
Anyway, as I'm the only one pushing this idea, it surely makes much less
sense than I thought. We can call it a day, before the OT-Thread-patrol
arrives.
Alain
Well, there's the problem.
What Rails developers think is worth it, might not be enough to make JetBrains any money; especially since there aren't that many Rails developers ...
Agreed that the 2 week Ruby plugin wouldn't cut it. What the Ruby community needs is a first class IDE.
A few thoughts: 2 people in our office have purchased IntelliJ to do their Ruby coding. They use it because of the excellent editor, the ease of navigation between files (CTRL-SHIFT-N), and the excellent integration with source control.
I personally use RadRails which is based on Eclipse. It's pretty clunky.... written by a couple of college guys in their spare time. Can't debug rails apps, the code completion is a joke. It sorta works.
All the guys in our office would definitely buy "IntelliRuby" for $500.
So the question for JetBrains is 1) is the java market growing? 2) do you want to move into another market? 3) is Ruby growing fast enough to justify the investment?
Currently what you see are 3 distinct development markets:
1) Java 2) .net 3) dynamic languages.
In my opinion 1 is flat (although big). 2 is all MSFT, I wouldn't touch it. 3 is PHP/Python/Perl/Ruby. All indications are that Ruby is in a huge growth period which the others are flat to slight growth. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/12/ruby_book_sales_surpass_python.html
So I guess JetBrains will have to decide if they want to be reactionary and wait and see if Ruby becomes big or not... or take an educated gamble.
Do the research. All indications are for web development rails will become a large player.
phil
In article <5006013.1140705038335.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net>,
no_mail@jetbrains.com says...
What indications? All the people I know are not interested in Ruby or
Rails? They are interested in more Java features including first class
Spring support. I would say that Jetbrains would be better off offering
even better java support and waiting to see if Ruby does what every
other dynamic language has done, which is very little.
--
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David H. McCoy
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+In my opinion 1 is flat (although big). 2 is all MSFT, I wouldn't touch it. 3 is PHP/Python/Perl/Ruby. All indications are that Ruby is in a huge growth period which the others are flat to slight growth. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/12/ruby_book_sales_surpass_python.html
+
Personally, I think book salesa are a very poor measure of future potential. Python has been 'mainstream' for much longer; so folk who needed books, would of bought them two years ago. Ruby/Rails is the new kid on the block, so it will obviously enjoy phenomenal sales. And a lot of the sales will be to people like me; pick up a few books, read them. See the value/shortcomings, then maybe wait to see if if it really is worth pursuing any further.
Since development is a career more the hobby, then I prefer to use available jobs as a measure, over book sales. Here's a small sample from last night's listings, from the UK's biggest job search:
ColdFusion - 10 jobs (seems to be enjoying a good few months since the Adobe takeover, which I find surprising. Also scores much higher on the Tiobe index than Ruby; but again, Tiobe is a poor measure).
Java - 192 jobs (and still rising since the beginning of the year)
Ruby OR Ruby on Rails - 0 jobs (occasionally a Rails job pops up, but strangely enough, they want ASP, Perl, JSP as well. This means they're looking for a general scripter, rather than a Rails person per se).
Now since IDE is a REALTIVELY expensive tool, aimed at the professional market, then JetBrains is probably interested in looking at beyond book sales, and the vocal handful who hang around on internet forums. They need real numbers; book sales are not real numbers; real tangible projects are.
Rayz wrote:
> the vocal handful who hang around on internet forums.
BRILLIANT: "Hype, Hype, Hype".
This thread is doomed because most people who don't know Rails are not
ready to accept/believe the Rails success stories and the arguments we
put forward : super-efficiency, code cleanless.
us : "With Rails, you develop 20x, 10x, 5x, 2x times faster, and the
code is cleaner and simpler to maintain"
you : "hype, hype, hype, prove it"
us : 'I prove it by doing it"
Stop seeing Rails like a threat, it's an opportunity. If you only do
Java and web projects, you'll lose projects to Rails.
When IntelliJ started the IDEA project, there was 1 book about
refactoring, and nobody/no crowd was asking for a refactoring tool in
Java. They innovated, and the world followed.
Alain
BRILLIANT: "Hype, Hype, Hype".
Yes, it's odd how the Java folk seem to be relatively calm and try to explain why a Rails IDE is not a good idea for JetBrains at this time. I don't think anyone has said that Rails is good or bad (though I have some serious misgivings); they simply don't believe that JetBrains should do a Rails IDE.
If you can come up with a decent proposal then fine, otherwise, stop crying in your beer and write one yourself.
+This thread is doomed because most people who don't know Rails are not
ready to accept/believe the Rails success stories and the arguments we
put forward : super-efficiency, code cleanless.+
Well, I think that a lot of folk here have looked at Rails, and just haven't found it to be the cure to world hunger that you seem to think it is. I've read the books, written a few apps, and although I was impressed with the language, I found Rails slightly underwhelming.
File-bases session handling? Yep, that'll scale well.
And for an MVC framework, that's a lot of code on your template pages. Even JSTL does a better job.
Stop seeing Rails like a threat, it's an opportunity. If you only do
Oh, I see. Because we don't agree with you, we must see it as a threat?
I could quite easily have said that your comments about Java were a poor attmept to convince folk to try Rails before its momentum dies off, and it vanishes in a puff of hype.
... but I won't.
Any freelancer is constantly on the lookout to learn the next big thing; they stand to make a lot of money in the early days when developers are thin on the ground. But if there are more envangelists than actual jobs, then they'll most probably just play it by ear.
+When IntelliJ started the IDEA project, there was 1 book about
refactoring, and nobody/no crowd was asking for a refactoring tool in
Java. They innovated, and the world followed.+
Poor example. What you really mean is:
"Until JetBrains came along, no-one using Java. They produced a cool IDE, then everyone jumped on the Java bandwagon"
Which obviously isn't true. JetBrains saw Java, saw that something was missing, and then filled a niche.
If you're looking to JetBrains to make Rails more popular, then I think you've got that backwards. Rails needs to prove itself viable, then JetBrains can look to bringing their expertise into making it a more pleasureble experience.
+Java and web projects, you'll lose projects to Rails.
+
Aah, the old 'join us or DIE!!' threat. When I see any real evidence. If the job situation improves, and the rates are good (and scripting rates are never brilliant), then I'll take a look. But you thumping your Rails bible isn't going to sway anybody one bit.
P.S.
ActiveRecord is very nice though.
super-efficiency, code cleanless
Yep. File-based session handling. That's efficient
Code mixed with templates. Very clean.
In article <dtme6v$f0t$1@is.intellij.net>, alain.ravet@biz.tiscali.be
says...
Right. It's fear. I've worked on projects from C, C++, and now Java
across Unix and Windows. ROR is just another also ran scripting
language. I hope people use ROR. That just means I'll get paid later to
convert it to Java.
I offered an entire listing of things our Java Struts/Spring/Hibernate
framework can do and have yet to see how ROR will compete.
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David H. McCoy
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